“The challenge now facing media resellers is how to adapt and educate their sales teams, as well as update their value propositions to sell social media-based SMB lead generation products and solutions. This is a change in the reseller script for social media.” Abid Chaudhry, senior director of industry strategy and insight at BIA/Kelsey said of our upcoming webinar on delivering cost-effective social ad solutions for SMBs with platforms that automate campaign creation and optimization at scale.

Based on our recent Tiger Pistol-sponsored white paper, the webinar explores social media marketing and advertising strategies for resellers. SMBs have ranked social media No. 1 in total spend and effectiveness for the past two years, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) Waves 18 and 19. The data indicate social advertising is vital to SMB marketing success today and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

LCM Wave 19 also revealed 73.2 percent of SMBs used social media in some capacity to advertise or promote their businesses, representing a one percent increase over the previous year. SMBs spent an average of 21.1 percent of their total media budgets on social, more than any other media channel.

Local social advertising accounted for $8.4 billion in 2014 revenue, and resellers can expect that to rise to $15 billion by 2018. The challenge will be to articulate and support the social value proposition for SMBs, which is the topic of the upcoming webinar on Wednesday, March 30 at 11:00 AM PDT. Abid will discuss social ad sales best practices with Tiger Pistol CEO and Cofounder Steve Hibberd, exploring the results of the Tiger Pistol-sponsored white paper, published this month, which can be downloaded here.

Register today to join in the live webinar. You’ll receive a link to a free download of the white paper when you register.